Our ears are amazing devices; they can pick up sounds literally as quite as a pin dropping to a jet aircraft taking off close by. When processed by our brain we have the ability to filter out lots of unwanted sounds and even the ability to work out that a sound is coming from left because is reaches your left ear a moment before the right.

Microphones are not intelligent; they pick up the wanted sound and the unwanted sound. Our job is to make sure they pick up mostly the wanted sound and avoid the unwanted sounds.

Getting the best quality sound

When working outside the unwanted noise is normally the background noise of everyday life - traffic, chatter, animals and aircraft. Indoors we have a similar set of problem sounds to avoid but we also have to contend with another - echo or reverberation. This is the wanted sound but at the wrong time.

The only way to record good sound outside of a recording studio is top get the microphone close to the wanted sound. Closer means it will be louder which means you will need to turn down the level of the recording to record it at the same level. Turning down the level reduces all of the sound, including the unwanted background sounds. The result is an improved ratio of wanted sound to unwanted sound. Job done!

Top tips for recording speech and dialogue:-

Take control of unwanted sounds - get the music turned off, mute the phones in an office, ask people around you for a little hush while you are recording. If you can't do this then move somewhere else where it is quiet.

If you are using a directional microphone they will pick up broadcast quality sound up to about one metre away, so you will need to be that close to the sound. Non-directional or hand microphones are normally effective to about half a metre. Anything further away than this means your sound just won't be good enough to broadcast.

When working with video it can be difficult to position the microphone close enough to pick up good sound without getting the mic in to shot. If you can't get the microphone in the correct place the sound will be useless. Without sound the shot will be useless so the director or camera operator may have to compromise the shot to get the sound.

There is very little in the world that sounds worse than wind noise. When working outside always use a windshield on all your microphones. Even in a still summers day there will often be enough breeze to completely ruin a recording. Make sure the wind shield is correctly fitted. On a directional microphone you will often see slots cut in the side of the barrel. Every single one of the slots must be covered if the windshield is to be of any use.

Sods law of sounds states clearly that batteries only ever run out during a recording. If a microphone can take power from a mixer, recorder or camera then use it rather than relying on batteries in microphones as it's usually more reliable. If the microphone can take a battery and "phantom power" it may seem like belt and braces so the best of both worlds. However, many mics will ignore the phantom power if a battery is fitted, meaning that when the battery goes flat the mic stops working. If you are using batteries in any microphone or radio pack then always carry a small battery tester. If you don't then you will need to change every battery, every day just to be on the safe side. Trust me it's much cheaper to spend a few quid on a tester.

My "First Rule of Radio Mics" states that "However reliable your radio mic is most of the time, it WILL let you down when the recording can't be repeated." For radio transmitters and receivers to work flawlessly they rely on so many external factors; and most of them are things we have no control of - will someone else use your frequency, what is the building made of, has there been a lot of sun spot activity recently? Only use a radio mic when you really don't have any other option and always try to have another microphone available to use the moment the radio fails.

Have a backup plan. We all have favourite microphones, not always the best or the most expensive, but those we are most comfortable using and we know how they will behave - so we use them day in and day out. Well one day something's going to go wrong. Before it does - ask your self "what you would do if any one of your main tools failed to work?" Planning how you would cope for a day with "Phantom power" will mean when it happens you won't panic and you will have a working practice in place to cope. My sound bag always carries at least one old beaten up dynamic (self powered) microphone that can be plugged straight into the back of a camera, when everything else has gone wrong.

Dealing with hard reverb. Large halls and churches can have wonderful reverberant acoustics for music but can be a nightmare to record an interview. There can be hundreds of reflections coming back, some of them a second late and since there is almost nothing to absorb them they are often nearly as loud as when they started. My top tip for coping with this is to go into a corner to record the interview. The director will probable complain the shot has been compromised but if you tuck the camera a tightly as possible into the corner shooting out then your interviewee will be talking into the corner. The reflections will be huge but the delay will be so short they should not be intrusive.

Stereo - what's that? Don't bother trying to record any dialogue in stereo, it's too complicated to get right and your editor is going to want something different to what you recorded anyway. Think of stereo as a Post Production tool for your editors, dubbing mixers or sound designers to deal with. A good well recorded mono dialogue track can be placed anywhere in the final mix and it will be determined by how the pictures are edited, not by how you imagined it on location.

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Getting the best quality sound

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